it had just been delivered.
the brand new, hot off the delivery truck: CHERRY CONSOLE ZENITH COLOR TELEVISION. it was not just a TV, it was an altar. Where my mother (and when he came home from work, my father) would sit and watch in awe.
i was forbidden to turn it on. forbidden. she wanted my father to bless the TV first. it was brand new. that’s what she said, BRAND. NEW. my mother told me that if i played with the TV – if I even touched the TV – she would punish me for three to four years. she meant business. our black and white television was being sent to the television graveyard. my mother was ecstatic. phone calls were made to all of her sisters (and sister-in-law) from brooklyn to evansville, indiana: “Gert. GOR.GEOUS.” “Sylvia, GOR.GEOUS.” “Edith, GOR.GEOUS.” “Pauline, GOR.GEOUS.”
She was delighted, ecstatic, and if not the first, close to being the first on our block to have a BRAND NEW color television. My mother thrived on this kind of shit. That goes under the Na-NA-na-NA-na umbrella.
she went upstairs to freshen up; lipstick, perfume, a fresh tease of the hair and a spritz of hairspray, so that when my father came home, both she and the TV looked sparkly and sexy, and gorgeous.
I did the forbidden.
good god yes.
I turned the TV on, watching the zig zag’s of color meshing and blending together… when all of a sudden, at a little after 5 pm, the entire TV blew – picture tube and all – along with all the lights in our house, and after my mother’s major nut-dance and carrying on, “look what you did, look what you did. LOOK WHAT YOU DID! GOD IS GOING TO PUNISH YOU!” It became throughly apparent that the entire neighborhood was now without electricity.
Pitch Black. For as far as the eye could see, BLACKNESS.
And of course, my mother continued to blame me for causing this catastrophic holy mess. “You. You did this. You. You made this entire town go dark. You? See what you did?”
Phone lines were criss-crossing and everything was in complete turmoil.
My father managed to get through to her from Penn Station (the LIRR) from one of the phone booths, where a long line of men stood waiting to call their wives to let them know that it looked pretty damn iffy making it home for dinner, let alone the evening. All train service had been cancelled. My father must have said something like: “Geez, I can’t leave the city, Bea, no trains are running, all tracks are shut down.” Because she said: “You know what, I don’t give a shit if you have to walk home, you get home. YOUR DAUGHTER DID THIS, SHE CAUSED THIS BLACKOUT.” I’m pretty sure my dad didn’t believe that I caused the blackout, but my mother was so thoroughly convinced that it was because I had played with the TV AGAINST HER WISHES. And even though the phones were jammed up for hours and hours – she managed to get through to a few near and dear and not only rail on about me, but made false promises that i would help with the ‘blackout’ cleanup.
Needless to say, everyone and I mean everyone, was told it was my fault. The girl from long Island who had the mystical powers to magically knock down the electrical line, all because I wanted to see the magic of color TV. And I remember thinking while I was banished to my room for an indefinite amount of time, “WOW! I must be really powerful, a whole entire blackout.” I did. I really truly believed I had magical power. My mother would have told you otherwise.
And, no, I didn’t feel like “a princess,” but I did feel every bit the super-girl.
And then of course other culprits started surfacing, the little boy who licked a frozen poll in Buffalo and while his tongue got frozen stuck – POUFFFF – all the lights went out, and the little girl who stepped on the crack and instead of breaking her back, the town went completely black, and the paperboy who tossed a newspaper from his bike and as soon as it hit the front door, all lights went out.
Tons of stories. Tons of folks thought they had caused the great black out of 1965. Each one I bet feeling just a hint of possibility that they had “superpowers.”
And of course, a day later the truth came out: a major grid blew in (i think) the Niagara Falls area. Leaving thousands upon thousands of folks without electricity. The whole eastern seaboard. Black. Had nothing to do with fidgeting with the TV knob. Or stepping on a crack, or licking a wet pole. Nothing. But…
It was years later when another blackout occurred and a story began surfacing that it was caused by a little boy who was walking along the sidewalk banging the telephone poles with a little wand, when all went black.
i wonder if he felt – on that day – for a mere few moments that he too was a super-boy with superpowers.
And really, the moral of this blog: even though none of us caused major electrical grid blackouts, we are all, each one of us, super-girls & boys.
we are.
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